Can anyone point me to Illinois law/procedures regarding drilling delinquent safe deposit boxes?

I'm not sure that I can be of much help, but first I recommend that you look to your safe deposit contract with your customer. The contract would state (or it should) what steps the bank would take in the event of delinquent safe deposit rents. As for specific law or legislation, here in California we are governed by UCC. Our Financial Code Section 1660 provides certain remedies provided by law for non-payment of safe deposit box rents. I imagine the State of Illinois would have similar code. I'm sure someone out there has this specific code/section that you are needing.....

Frenchie,
I have something here that may help. A letter from Judy Baar Topinka's office states that Public Act 91-16 moved the jurisdiction for unclaimed property from the Dept. of Fin. Inst. to the Office of the treasurer. I don't have time to read the act right now, but maybe this will be a start.

http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/pubact91/acts/91-0016.html

Also see this, the Uniform Disposition of Unclaimed Property Act

Thanks Mom of Princess Nataliebear for your assistance and link. I found that same information but it only talks about unclaim property and those procedures, not anything about accessing/drilling a delinquent safe deposit box. I am coming to the conclusion that there may not be any state law regarding drilling delinquent boxes.

Happy Trails, I did look at our safe deposit box contract (dated 1991) and it did have a section on delinquent boxes but it was somewhat vague in referring to Federal and State Law (giving what looked like a section of "law" but did not specify if it was state or federal, plus the date on the form is 1991).

I appreciate your responses. Thank you.

Illinois does not have a statute that regulates your procedures for drilling a safe deposit box due to unpaid rents. (Some states do, but Illinois does not.) Your only available guidance is your contract.

The language you refer to in the contract indicates the vendor was attempting to make that portion of the contract generic; i.e. equally acceptable in a state like Tennessee that has relevant statutory provisions and in a state like Illinois that does not.

If it is necessary for you to devise a procedure, then I suggest your primary focus should be on assuring that you have provided adequate advance notice of your intentions to the renter. After that, focus on assuring that any contents are removed under dual control, inventoried and then maintained under dual control. Any lien or power of sale you may have over the contents will be found in your contract - state law does not provide for either.

I think we did everything legitimately, but I am sure we will get flack on this anyway.

Customer goes delinquent on her SDB payments. We try to send her a delinquency notice, but it is sent back to us "no forwarding address". We do not know any of her family and she has no other accounts. More than 5 years go by. Our contract says we can drill the box in instances of delinquent rents and owner is responsible for drilling costs. So, we drill the box, two officers and the driller present. The two of us inventory the box, with a separate employee nearby to notorize our paperwork. Inside we find envelopes. Upon opening one of the evelopes, we find her will, and also find she has remarried and changed her name and address, neither of which was reported to us. When I checked the white pages, it looks like she still lives there.

Now, we are going to try and contact her at this new address so she can get her stuff (and pay for the drilling). She is probably going to go ballistic that we opened the box and her will, but without doing so, we would not have known about the name and address change.

Any ideas how to smooth this rough situation?